Submissions

**The Columbia Law Review will not be reviewing articles or essays submitted for print publication consideration after April 23th, 2013. We will begin reviewing manuscripts again on August 1st. Please understand that we cannot honor requests for expedited review until August.

Any such article or essay submitted after April 23, 2013 may require re-submission, as our submission system will be undergoing maintenance from May-July.  Please check back with this website in late July for instructions on how to submit for 2014 publication consideration.

Submissions for online publication by Columbia Law Review Sidebar will continue to be accepted on a rolling basis.  We encourage you to submit essays for online publication consideration through out the year.**

Regular Submission Review

The Columbia Law Review is published eight times a year, in every month but February, July, August, and September. We accept submissions on a rolling basis, and we encourage authors to submit pieces electronically.

Submissions may be mailed to the appropriate committee. Our address for both mail and courier delivery is:

Columbia Law Review

435 West 116th Street

New York, NY 10027

Submission requirements:

• Submit only one, double spaced copy of your manuscript. We greatly prefer if submissions appear in Microsoft Word format. Regular submissions are only accepted electronically via our website-based submissions system or via mail. Please note that we do not accept regular submissions by e-mail, disk, or facsimile.
• Text and citations should conform to A Uniform System of Citation (19th ed. 2010) (“The Bluebook”). Footnotes are strongly preferred over endnotes.
• If you submit your piece via mail, enclose a cover letter that references the name of your manuscript, and provides your address, telephone number, and e-mail address.
• We encourage the use of gender-neutral language.

We believe that a vast majority of law review articles can convey their arguments effectively with between 20,000 and 37,000 words (including footnotes).  We will accept submissions exceeding 32,000 words in the event that the length is merited.  We will, however, give strong preference to pieces that contain fewer than 32,000 words. This policy reflects our commitment to what a number of law reviews around the United States have recognized:  We can do our part to make legal scholarship more focused and effective. For additional information regarding Sidebar submission requirements, please see the Sidebar section below.

Please do not submit student-written Articles or Essays.  They will not be considered.  We do, however, accept student-written Sidebar submissions.

We regret that manuscripts cannot be returned. Please allow 4–6 weeks for processing of all electronic submissions, and 8–10 weeks for all mailed submissions.

Expedited Review

If you have received an offer from another journal for your Article, Essay, or Book Review and would like to request an expedited review, please click here.

Please be aware of the Review‘s policy concerning expedited reviews: If the Review makes an offer of publication for an Article, Essay, or Book Review following an expedited review, the author has only one hour from the time of actual notification in which to accept the offer. This policy does not apply to Sidebar pieces.

Articles and Essays

We have received many inquiries about the differences between essays and articles. First, it is important to emphasize that page length is irrelevant: Essays can certainly be long, and articles short.

Articles tend to be research pieces analyzing a problem and suggesting a solution. Such analysis usually articulates some background information to inform the reader, before turning to a novel argument. Along these lines, published articles regularly follow a traditional roadmap of introduction, background, analysis/argument, and conclusion, and provide a comprehensive treatment of a particular area of law. Articles tend to be formal in both the author’s tone and in the obligation to ground information and analysis in comprehensive substantive support via consistent citation.

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